The Impact of Organizational Management Factors on Direct Employee Consultation in Distribution Channels

Abstract

Purpose: Facing numerous challenges, organizational management is one of the most important research areas for organizations which handles workers' behaviors when they are within their workplace and organization to make more profits. The current research aims to analyze the effect of organizational management factors on direct employee consultation in distribution channels. Research design, data, and methodology: To achieve the purpose of the study and provide adequate empirical results, the current authors conducted the structural equation analysis using IBM AMOS 24.0 and collected 387 U.S employees in distribution channels (Wholesale and Retail shops). Results: Investigating the relationships between three organizational management factors and direct employee consultation, we found out that organizational practitioners in distribution channels face numerous challenges that must be resolved to ensure effective direct employee consultation to benefit employees. Empirical findings suggest that practitioners and leaders in distribution channels should focus on developing employee psychological management and utilizing direct employee consultation. Conclusions: In sum, the present research concludes that it must ensure that the employee in distribution channels should be a comfortable environment to appropriately respond to consultations. An approachable management team is ideal for employee consultations to find the right ways to keep employees at par with the consultation issues.

1.Introduction

All organizations are developed to produce maximum profits; hence they take different measures to achieve their goal (Osborne & Hammoud, 2017). Therefore, for an organization to make more profits, it must ensure that workers can adjust and work together for the organization's advantage.Besides, today organizations are incorporating technology, best practices, and education for employees and only taking skilled labor for efficiencies and making an impact on the community. Therefore, since the organization needs profits and efficiency for service delivery, they must incorporate ways through which they will keep workers together as they take part in daily organizational programs (Osborne & Hammoud, 2017).

Organizational behavior analysisis the study of worker behaviors when they are within their workplace. Workers in an organization also include the management team and junior workers. Workers show their behaviors through verbal and nonverbal communication, including their actions during supervision and alone. Learning workers' behaviors requires in-depth knowledge and understanding of workers' career development, attitudes when they work, decision approaches they use, how workers analyze the tasks, and social group approaches they use to showcase their relationship with colleagues(Bal, & Dóci, 2018; Bond, & Smith, 1996)

Further, organizational management includes the community's employees' ethical and cultural aspects as employees apply them at the workplace. Ethical and cultural aspects that affect employees' behaviors are influenced by race, employee positions at work, and personal perception towards others. Organizational workers spent nearly, same or more than half of their daily time at work. Such is a time staying at one place. Therefore, HR practitioners have a task to ensure that they provide an effective work environment through which employees feel satisfied through proper conversation with employees. It would help create an ideal relationship within the organization by identifying potential losses or profits depending on direct employee conversation.

Well-established organizational management based on the consultation program is vital within the organization, forthey collaborate with the organization's human resource team to ensure that they understand workers' needs, thus having the upper hand when it comes to solving workers' problems. Further, organizational psychologists encourage and train company employees on the ideal and practical behaviors to ensure that they work together (Haga, 2016). Also, they have to achieve the company's international hierarchical leadership structures and efficiency. Finally, HR managerswithin the organization analyze the patterns through which an organization can make more sales through teaching ethical practices that create an ideal environment where the workers can relate well with clients.

In addition, HR practitioners in distribution channels use different methods while assessing workers for different tasks (Baron, Melania & Agustina, 2020; Richard & Kang, 2018). Besides, they have the mandate to help the company achieve its goals by checking if the chosen workers are suitable for the tasks at hand. Assessments plans done by HRdepartment within the organization aim to ensure that the organization is on the right track and workers have a mission stated by the organizational management (Baron et al., 2020). They use different methods to ensure that they understand how employees feel and think about the organization. Prior literature has pointed out that one-way practitioners use the direct consultation for assessing workers is to get more information and stick to facts. Besides, direct interviews and conversations are private, andthrough them, workers can detail how they feel about the organization. This paper analyses and investigates empirically using 384 U.S workers in the manufacturing industry to check whether three organizational management factors that have been true as most important factors can affect to lead direct employee consultation including, possible benefits of the approach, challenges, implications for the organization, and possible solutions to the problems associated with psychology management within the organization. The present authors believe no other research has conducted these relationships using empirical approach.

2. Literature Review

From the literature review analysis, the current authors found out that organizational behavior management in various distribution channels faces numerous challenges that must be addressed to ensure effective direct employee consultation to benefit the organization's workers. Since the organization's behavior analysis benefits workers and the organization, it is vital to formulate the solutions to the ever increasing challenges faced during direct consultations. For effective direct employee consultation, the following must be applied.

2.1. Crating a work culture for supporting direct employee consultation

According to prior research, direct employee consultation is beneficial for the company. Therefore, it is the company's responsibility to ensure it creates an ideal work environment that will enable employees and the management team to have a clear and healthy relationship. Organizational culture is attributed through which the organization sets rules and attributes which must be followed for the organization to achieve its goals as they direct the organization to profitability (Tangirala, & Ramanujam, 2012; Lee & Kang, 2021; Kim, 2020). A culture is a set of rules through which an organization ensures the workers are conformed to being part of the organization. Further, culture is a set of beliefs and behaviors through which all employees must follow while they are at the company. Once admitted to being part of the organization, all workers have an obligation through which they must follow. Organizational culture plays a vital role in employee workplace success (Taylor, Suminski, Das, Paxton & Craig, 2018). Despite the organization's culture being part of the organization, they can be changed depending on employee needs and demands and the company's vision.

Direct employee participation is part of an organizational culture through which the employees must follow to ensure they follow the set rules. Therefore, the solution to have a poor direct consultation is to create a work culture that allows employees to have a voice in the organization. Such a culture will ensure direct consultations are followed and employees are genuine in what they tell the management team. Besides, an effective work culture that allows employees not to be judged on what they say and provide them with the right and privilege of speech enables an organization to have appropriate results for direct consultations(Tangirala, & Ramanujam, 2012; Andersson & Mattsson, 1994).

Work culture includes all aspects through which the organization will ensure appropriate results. Organizational culture has characterized like the norms are determined by the amount of work one does and the level of commitments, and how employees cooperate with the management to achieve company goals. An organizational culture checks for all workers' observational behaviors and determines their level of commitment to the company. Organizational culture increases motivation and performance support (Marin- Pantelescu & Maniu, 2015). Further, organizational culture creates clear and practical rules that all workers must follow since they are formal and common. All the set rules within an organization detail how the workers will correspond and interact with the management team (Kang, & Hwang, 2017). Therefore, a solution to the poor communication ineffective consultation is dealt with by creating a workable and ideal work culture for all workers to engage freely with the management team, thus getting appropriate results that will benefit the company and workers' time at work.

2.2. Utilization of the Leadership

Organizational leaders being the management approach, detail which an organization chooses to direct its workers effectively for successful organizational management to ensure successful employee consultation. Employees' satisfaction depends on ideal leaders direct and treats them (Tewari, Gujarathi & Maduletty, 2019; Schneider, 2002; Woo & Kang, 2020). Leadership Organizations have different leadership styles depending on the nature and administrative systems of the organization. Therefore different leadership styles like for instance:

(1) Democratic leadership style allows the organizational management to let workers contribute to the company decisions. Democratic leadership style effectively contributes to direct employee consultants because it gives employees the mandate to participate in decision-making.

(2) Strategic leadership practices allow the leaders to employ different leadership styles depending on the situation at hand. For instance, strategic leaders might choose to use democratic or situational leadership styles when they are affected by different kinds of decisions. Therefore, through the strategic leadership style, the management team can develop an excellent relationship with the employees, thus effectively making direct employee consultation for they have a good relation. Despite the kind of leadership style a companyemploys, it is vital for it is ideal for it to ensure good leadership. Good leadership improves the productivity of both public and private organizations; it creates confidence for workers' and improves the listening and communication skills for workers. However, leadership styles like a dictatorial advocate for the leaders having the final say without considering employees us ineffective here (Hogan., & Kaiser, 2005; Byrom, & Downe, 2010). Therefore, effective organizational psychology management includes incorporating good leadership for employees to open up to direct consultation (Yang & Kwon, 2015; Astutl, Shodikin & Ud-Din, 2020).

2.3. Effective Communication

Communication is defined as the act of passing information from one person to another or to a group of people to make them understand and do what is told. An organization has the mandate to give employees direction on their responsibility during work (Kelvin-Iloafu, 2017). The organization provides direction through verbal communication and/or through media like phones. Despite the methods used for communicating to employees, an organization needs to ensure effective communication practices are applied for understanding (Bucăţa & Rizescu, 2017; Suter, Arndt, Arthur, Parboosingh, Taylor, & Deutschlander, 2009). Besides, consultations are done through communication. Therefore, to avoid poor consultations, which might lead to employees' wrong information or answers, the management needs to employ effective communication considering the employee's reaction and feel about the consultation's nature. The most common communication style during the consultation is verbal communication. Therefore, direct consultations are done either written directly to management or done verbally between the management and employees. The following must be considered for an effective consultation process:

(1) Perception: it is a situation where the employee receives information in the form of a question concerning the organization and is given time to process the question. (Kelvin-Iloafu, 2017). Perception is vital for ensuring that there is mutual understanding during direct consultation.

(2) Noise: during consultations, the management steam must ensure that they perform it in a calm environment, which creates an understanding between the employee and management. Besides, employees require privacy to open up and say their minds.

(3) Emotions: they are the feels exhibited by the employee during consultations. Therefore, for effective communications, the management must understand that different employees have different emotions.

2.4. Organizational Policy

Organizational policies are the set rules and procedures governing the daily activities of the organization. All employees must understand the policies as they apply to the organization's conduct. Most organizations provide policies to employees during their first time at work. Such policies are used as guides to do what the organization requires. Therefore, for the organization to ensure appropriate employee consultations, it must have policies that state how the employees will conduct themselves during consolations. Organizational psychology management will be critical within proper corporate policywith the organization's HR department, making sure that organizational understand employees' needsincluding psychological stability and job complexity, and managers have an ability to handle employees’ issues (Haga, 2016; Georgakopoulos, Wilkin, & Kent, 2011;Luthans, 2002).

Besides, policies are meant to create motivation and strategic planning for employees, such as policies that advocate for workers' incentives when they participate in consultations. Through such measures, the organization will create an ideal environment where employees can fulfill work instructions. Therefore, such policies will ensure that employees answer direct consultation questions for they know it is part of the work expectations. However, while using the technique of having policies to make employees take part in consultations, as organizational psychologists, it is vital to ensure that they are not forced, but they do it from their will; if not, they will provide false information as long as they have fulfilled company policies.

Figure 1: The Organizational Factor Model of the literature

3. Method

3.1. Research Model and Hypotheses

The present research classified main organizational factors into work culture, leadership, and communication factors to measure the relationships between three organizational factors and direct employee consultation. Investigating these strong positive relationships in distribution channels, the present research might provide a useful information for practitioners in retail and wholesale channels. Figure2indicates the research model of this study. As a result, the hypothesesof this research are following:

Figure 2: The Solution Model of the Research

Hypothesis 1: Work culture has a positive impact with direct employee consultation in the distribution channel.

Hypothesis 2: Leadership has a positive impact with direct employee consultation in the distribution channel.

Hypothesis 3: Effective communication has a positive impact with direct employee consultation in the distribution channel.

3.2. Variables

The survey instrument's total questions used to gather variable values were 27questions (Work culture-6questions, Leadership-11questions, Communication-4 questions, and Employee consultation-6 questions). Variables regarding ‘Work culture’were based directly on by prior study (Kang & Lee, 2021) and the part of the ‘Leadership’ on the instrument was based totally on the study ofBhattiet al (2012). And the items regarding ‘Communication’ was borrowed by the prior study (Andersson, 2019) and lastly, Direct employee consultation variables were copied totally by the study of Ruck, Welch& Menara(2017). These prior studies already indicated a high degree of reliability and validity.

Table 1: Variables that come fromprior literature

3.3.Analyzing Tool and Data Collection

The statistical processing and analysis methods to achieve the purpose of this study are as follows. First, statistical processing of collected data was analyzed using IBM SPSS statistics 24 and AMOS 24.0 programs. To verify theconvergent validityof measuring tools for main factors, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to confirm the suitability of the structural equation model. Next, this research also usedpath analysis to checkthe hypothesis and examine the structural relationship between main factors of this research.

The current research obtained real data from the 387 U.S employees in various distribution channels located inthe metropolitan area between January 3, 2021, and February10, 2021, distributing questionnaires in person or ‘Google Forms’ which is an online survey administration software. A total of 526 questionnaires were distributed, and consequently, 387 sets of the questionnaire were used for the final study analysis. Data collecting procedure presented in more detail in Table 2, 3 and 4.

Table 2: Example of a Table Caption

Table 3: The breakdown information of data collected

Table 4: Example of a Table Caption

4. Findings

4.1. Descriptive Statistics

To compare mean scores among main factors and describe the basic features of main factors, descriptive statistics were used. To summarize large sets of quantitative (numerical) information is the purpose of using descriptive statistics. The follow was included in the descriptive analyses: (1) mean (2) mode (3) median (4) standard deviation.

Table 5: Descriptive Statistics

4.2 Reliability Analysis

Based on the obtained final dataset (N = 387), to measure the reliability of all main factors, Cronbach’s alpha analysis was conducted to gauge internal consistency. Usually, more than 0.6 point for the alpha value means the acceptable value and more than 0.8 is regarded as an exceptional level. Table 6 indicates that Cronbach alpha values regarding all factors were greater than 0.7 and the present authors could believe that all sub-factors were connected one another to measure main factors reliably.

Table 6: Results of Cronbach’s Alpha Analysis

4.3. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

As mentioned earlier, the current research conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to measure a conversion validity and confirm whether main factors’ measurement variables reasonably explained the latent variables. Table 5 shows that the value of average variance extracted (AVE) is more than .5, which means that all measurement variables can be regarded as having conversionvalidity since they revealed more than the corresponding reference value (.5). Table 7 indicates the detailed results of the CFA analysis.

Table 7: The result of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Fitness Index: χ2=236.53, df=95, p=.000, RMR=.016, TLI=.959, GFI=.951, CFI=.968, RMSEA(90% CI)=.053, ***p < .001

4.4. Research model verification result

To determine the research model's fit, χ2, RMR, TLI, GFI, CFI, and RMSEA were used as indicators. For model fit, the absolute fit (χ2, RMR, GFI, RMSEA, etc.) and incremental fit (TLI, CFI, etc.) were used. As can be seen in tables 8 (χ2=236.53 (df=95, p<.001), RMR=.016, GFI=.951, TLI=.959, CFI=.968, RMSEA=.053 (90 % CI: .045 to .069) and a result of the final analysis of the path coefficient indicated that the three organizational factors have a significantly positive (+) effect on DEC values (β=.37 (Culture), 39 (Leadership), 35 (Communication), p<.001) (See the table 8). Therefore, the current research accepts the hypothesis 1, 2 and 3 in determining that work culture leadership, and communication can enhance the impact of direct employee consultationin distribution channels.

Figure 3: Standardized Coefficients of Path Analysis

Table 8: Result of Path Analysis

***p<.001, R2 for DEC= .49, χ2=236.53(df=95, p<.001), RMR=.016, GFI=.951, TLI=.959, CFI=.968

5. Conclusion

The present research accepted all hypotheses based on empirical findings which are indicated in the previous section and came from reasonable dataset without any falsification. Organizations in distribution channels are developed to ensure maximum profits. As a result, the management team does everything possible to ensure thatis team does everything possible to ensure that itachieves its goals. One of the major elements that always follow is providing their employees with an ideal work environment to follow for a successful management-employee relationship.

Therefore, organizations in distribution channels should use counselors to check and analyze the psychological aspects of direct consultations with employees. The organizational management team might use different aspects to understand how the employees feel and what factors might affect their responses during the consultations. A similar approach happens when employees and clients are doing service delivery (Tan, 2012). By assessing workers' motivations and company environment, psychologists can relate with and be honest during consultations. Consultations are meant to inform the management team what is going on within the company, thus enabling them to create ideal collections. It is vital to conductconsultations with employees since they are part of the company and understand what they like and what borderthem.Numerous studies have been done that analyze the organizational psychological managements, however few narrow down to direct employee consultations.

Notably, organizational psychology works are vital for they include aspects within the organization and at home that affect workers' ability to get involved in consultations. Therefore, organizations have a mandate to employee counselors to educate the management team on the right approached to use while performing consultations. During consultations, the most prominent problem is that employees give wrong information, affecting the management's team's decisions to develop the organization. As a result, solutions to direct consultation issues are for the organization to adopt a positive culture, which will create an ideal relationship between workers and the management. When workers are open with the management team, they offer genuine suggestions during consultations. Further, the organization must adopt effective leadership styles appropriate for workers to support and work well with the management team. Third, the management team must ensure creating an ideal communication strategy, thus creating a connection with workers. Finally, organizations must create policies that include employee consultations as part of work. Such measures will eliminate poor consultation measures and enable the organization to receive genuine and correct answers from the employees during consultations. Organizational psychological management is an ideal procedure for enduring that the management gets more from workers. Therefore, all organizations should analyze their leadership styles, communications strategies and a workable culture for its success.

6. Implication

Organizational psychological management is vital for the company to have effective employee-management team relations. Therefore, counselors who pose as organizational psychologists have the mandate to ensure that the management team knows how to handle employees and create an appropriate environment for the employees to tell the truth when they are consulted about the organization. Consulting employees are vital since they are part of the company and know what affects them when it comes to the company's management and growth. Organizations ensure that they indulge with their workers to make conclusive and practical decisions for their future.

It requires analysis and psychological knowledge for the organization's management team to ensure they are in a good relationship with the employees. When employees are happy about the organization, they will correspond by giving correct information during the consultation. Such information will create awareness for the organization to make policies that will ensure its growth. Since organizations understand that it is vital to provide a conducive environment for the benefits of the employees, and in turn, the employees will work for the betterment of the organization.

Organizational psychologists advocate for all organizations to ensure effective leadership, creating a practical and appropriate organizational culture, and ensure effective communication. All the stated measures ensure that workers have a great relationship with the management team for a successful direct consultation. Directemployee consultations benefit the organizations; hence, it must ensure that it gives the employee a nice environment to appropriately respond to consultations. An approachable management team is ideal for direct employee consultations. Analyzing factors affecting employees in the organization and at home enables organizational psychologists to find the right ways to keep employees at par with the consultation issues.